OpenRA

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OpenRA is a libre/open source project recreating several real-time strategy games by Westwood Studios.[1]

The project is openly developed at GitHub.[2] Although developed by hobbyists the project is well established consisting of a mature codebase that is maintained by relative large development team.[3] Recent contributors have steered it towards adopting unit testing and static code analysis as well as setting up continuous integration services like Travis CI and AppVeyor to ensure quality.[4]

The game engine is written in C# using SDL for cross-platform support. It is access modern hardware using OpenGL for rendering and OpenAL for sound.[5] It uses the .NET Framework and runtime on Microsoft Windows and the Mono equivalent on Linux and Mac OS X.[6] Font rendering is implemented by accessing the FreeType library. Mono.NAT enables UPnP support for NAT devices like routers to ease multiplayer hosting.[7]

From a gameplay standpoint the engine doesn't aim for a perfect clone of the originals, but instead add contemporary features of the genre such as fog of war and unit veterancy.[8] The game features modern e-Sport grade features such as replay recording and playback.[9] Another major design goal was allowing players to create their own content such as maps and mods.[10] Mods re-imaging the original Command & Conquer, Red Alert and Dune 2000[11] were released by the developer team, while Tiberian Sun and Red Alert 2 are work in progress.[12]

To teach a practical lecture in software architecture professors at TU Delft let their students work on the OpenRA engine learn during the code review upon submission of the course work.[13] The developer team is also working together with media design students to let their research and development make it's way into the game engine, but to take extra pre-cautions to retain the pixel art style.[14]

↑Vogt, Raphael (2015). Protoyping of a rain and snow system in the C&C: Red Alert remake OpenRA. Documentation of a generic process to expand a 2D video game in retro style with modern standard features. (B.Sc. thesis). doi:10.13140/RG.2.1.1023.0245.